The Forgetting Joke
by Somnambulista
Summary: Audrey is back in Haven after a brief hiatus for the FBI, and she's returned with a few troubles of her own. Nathan/Audrey. AU, sort of. OCs.
1. The Return

I do not own Audrey, Nathan, or any of the characters created for Haven. I only own the original characters. This story is set a year into Nathan and Audrey knowing eachother.

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001

Nathan woke up to the sound of a ringing alarm clock, and slapped his hand wildly in the darkness. The sun had not yet risen in the township of Haven, though he didn't know how much difference it would do when it _did_ rise. The fog had been unmanageable lately, causing problems for everyone commuting. He'd been working overtime just lending aid to the department for traffic control, and that was split with his usual job of investigating actual crimes. He rose after a few blissful moments of silence, which were interrupted by the sound of rain beginning to splatter at the window nearest his bed. With a grunt to vocalize his discontentment with having to be awake at four AM, he stood and walked on bare feet across the hardwood floor to the window. He flipped back the curtain and looked across the yard, into the cold swell of ocean beyond. He had to be at PWM in a few hours to pick Audrey up, and he already had a feeling this day wasn't going to be a good one.

He dressed with the sound of the radio in the background, having chosen a morose _Requiem Mass_ to start his day with. Well, he didn't choose it precisely, but that was what Janet and Nigel, the older couple who ran the small classical station, had selected that morning to begin with. He sat down in front of a bowl of cereal, mouth set in a firm frown as he tried to go over the things he needed to do that day. The list included Audrey's welcome back party, which Duke had gone to absurd amount of trouble over, especially since the Grey Gull was going to be used as the stage for. He needed to find a way to get her there without her being suspicious, which was going to be impossible considering the woman was an FBI agent. He didn't know why it had to be a surprise, honestly – it wasn't like Audrey was modest, so she'd probably love the idea that the locals had missed her. She had become one of them over the course of her stay, especially since Nathan had accepted her (though that had taken some time).

He still didn't know how to react when he saw her. They'd gotten close over the year that they'd known eachother, even began dating. Audrey had all but been grounded there, setting up office in the area after the local government had pulled strings to keep her around. They claimed that she was invaluable to their police department, and Audrey had found a way to work there and turn into more of an adviser with her FBI status for cases of a 'strange' nature. She seemed to specialize in the weird, which probably explained why Nathan was drawn to her. Duke had been, too, at first, and Nathan had kept his opinions to himself about it, since Audrey would do whatever Audrey wanted to do. Luckily, it hadn't panned out, and Duke became more of a brother-figure to her than he had even to Nathan. Nathan was okay with that, though – it meant that he wouldn't have to worry about Duke trying his luck with her again.

They'd gotten more serious right before she'd been summoned by her overheads, and they hadn't really even gotten a chance to talk about what had happened. When he tried to talk to her on the phone, she sounded tired and overworked. She was always happy to speak to him – Audrey wasn't good at feigning happiness, he knew – but she couldn't ever hide the stress in her voice. It was as though there was a shadow over every word she said, and he knew that it was going to bite him in the ass eventually. Whatever it was, she didn't seem to want to talk about it on the phone, so when she'd finally told him she was done with her obligation and coming back, Nathan was thrilled and terrified at the same time. Audrey had been in Haven long enough, and was connected enough to it, that she seemed to have Troubles of her own. Nathan didn't know how that would bode in conjunction with his.

As he filled his old blue truck up, he took a few minutes to psychoanalyze the fact that she'd called Haven home. She'd said, "Flight lands at seven fifteen. Can you believe it? Two days and I'll be home!" He grunted again as the gas pump clicked off, and thrust the device into its holder. What did she mean, home? Did she consider Haven her home, finally? Did she consider HIM home? He frowned more deeply than before, and made his way through the rain to go inside and pay Reggie, the cashier.

"Mornin' Nathan!" the petite brunette chirped. She was standing on a blue milk crate, shoving packs of cigarettes into their sliding holders in the display behind the counter. She jumped down and brushed her shirt off, then gave him a big grin. "Today's the big day, ain't it?" she asked, hopeful.

"Big day?" he asked. He set a twenty dollar bill down on the counter, glancing behind her through the window at the rain as it fell in big gusts.

"Yeah! Audrey's comin' home, right? It's Friday! Are we all still due at Duke's roundabout eight? Jeff and I are gonna bring some odds and ends we got for her, if you don't mind. I know nobody said anything about gifts, but we just couldn't resist a few." She practically danced in place.

When was it that they'd started calling her Audrey and stopped calling her Agent Parker? Had to have been some time when Nathan didn't recall, but somehow the town had taken to her in a way he'd never imagined. Her absence seemed to have make them grow even fonder, actually – Nathan could say the same for himself, but he was too proud to admit it. He smiled to Reggie.

"I don't think anyone will mind. And yeah, eight o'clock. I'm going to try and get her there on time, but you know how she likes to talk," he said with a laugh.

"That I do, officer," she said with a bright grin. "Rain should clear up the closer to Portland you get. I heard it on the radio. Hey, will you tell Jan and Nigel to quit with the classical music and play somethin' a little more contemporary? I 'bout went back to sleep, and I would have, too, if the dogs didn't start barkin' at the rain," she added.

For some reason, this made Nathan's smile more broad and genuine. The way the town all seemed to overlap itself was uncanny, Troubles or no. He suddenly couldn't wait to see Audrey, to tell her about all the things she'd missed, to kiss those lips of hers. "I promise, I'll say something. See you, Reggie," he called over his shoulder with a hand held in the air and two fingers up as a wave goodbye.

Nathan drove into dawn, and as he did the fog and rain began to clear, slowly but surely. By the time he reached Portland International, it was sunny and cool. The high for the day was only seventy-something, despite it being August, but that would be plenty warm for him. He didn't live so far north because he wanted a good tan, after all. His phone rang twice on the way to PWM, once from his father, to tell him that someone's cows had gotten out and had wandered all the way into the streets of Haven, and once from Duke, to tell him that he was Satan for making him get up so early to prepare. Nathan was thankful that he was far enough away that he didn't need to deal with either pressing dilemma.

As he waited in the airport terminal for Audrey, he felt butterflies in his stomach for the first time in a long time. Would she still feel the same way she had when she left? She'd told him that she wanted to try her hand at a real relationship, and he felt the same way – and then, of course, her job put itself in the middle of them. She always put her job first, but so did Nathan, even though he couldn't precisely help it. He didn't think she could, either, but that's why he liked her so much. Audrey had a real sense of duty and loyalty, not like other women he'd met. She was also bold, and brave, and she had a good sense of humour.

He nearly dropped his coffee as he saw her form appear at the top of the escalator. She was relaxed back on one leg, the other crooked slightly against the luggage she had been tugging behind her. Her blonde hair was in its usual fashion of waves, secured at the nape of her neck with a black elastic band and pushed over the shoulder of her light blue button-down. He didn't understand how she could be so enchanting just [i]standing[/i] there, staring off into nothing. She had obviously not expected him to be there yet, but that had more to do with the fact that she'd spent the last 12 or so hours moving through the timezones. She wasn't even sure what time it _was,_ but the lack of sleep made her attention span shrivel down to the size of a gnat, and she almost tripped coming off of the moving steps.

"Audrey!" he called. He resisted the urge to run over to her, instead opting to walk quickly, and was very surprised when she looked up with that stunned expression she had so well – open mouth, eyes wide, body frozen in mid-bend to catch herself. She lit up like a Christmas tree as soon as she registered what was going on, though, and before he'd made it all the way to her, she'd taken a jump for him, wrapping her arms tightly around him.

"I missed you," she breathed. He felt her tighten her grip on him, almost like she was afraid that if she let go, he'd vanish, and he buried his head into the nook of her shoulder.

"I missed you, too. Now come on, let's get you home," he said. He was taking a chance with that 'home' word again, almost like he was testing to see what she'd say. Audrey just smiled at him and grabbed her suitcase. "Your stuff should be in the claim by now," he informed her, taking her free hand as they walked.

"God, that flight was terrible, Nathan. I haven't slept in like, two days," she told him, making gestures with the hand he held, causing his arm to raise and lower as she spoke. "Sea-Tac is the most crowded airport on the face of this planet. I left there at, like, eleven last night, right? Layover in Denver, then again in Philly. It sucked. I kept waiting for the gremlins from Twilight Zone to start ripping panels off of the plane and fling them into the turbines. If I never get on another plane again, I will not be heartbroken."

Nathan laughed. "That bad?" he asked, arching his brows at her in disbelief. "I'd have thought you'd loved to get away," he said as they approached the claim. He broke free of her to snatch her bags off of the rotating rack. The bright red ribbon he'd tied around both of the handles was still in tact, and he felt a little triumphant about that.

"Stop fishing," she warned him. Audrey was blunt, which would take some getting used to all over again, but it wasn't a trait that he'd miss. At least he knew she wouldn't be lying anytime soon.

"I'm not fishing," he insisted, "but it still baffles me that you'd rather stay here, especially when your talent for the weird has caused you to pick up popularity with unexplained FBI cases that are pending all over the states."

"Well, you're not all over the states," she said matter-of-factly. "Come on, I want to take a nap before the party." She nodded her head towards the large doors that lead out of the airport and spilled out into the daylight.

"Party?" he asked, following behind her with the other two bags. "What makes you think there's a party?"

Audrey turned as she walked, pointing at him. "Because, Nathan Wournos, I know you." She grinned and raised her eyebrows at him, then spun back around to face the front just as she reached the door. She pushed it open and began heading for his Ford, with or without him.


	2. Home

I do not own Audrey, Nathan, or any of the characters created for Haven. I only own the original characters. This story is set a year into Nathan and Audrey knowing eachother.

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002

Audrey couldn't sleep the entire trip back to Haven. It wasn't even that she was excited – she'd be lying if she said she weren't, obviously, but it was just that she'd had trouble sleeping lately. She'd been a zombie for the last few days, up for 20-40 hours at a time, before she'd return to her hotel and pass out face-first onto her bed for three or four hours, only to be called back in. Her advising job had turned out to be more like a hands-on experience. She and one other agent there were the only people willing to suspend belief enough to see the case through – and _what _a case it had been.

She and Agent Davis would be the only two people who really knew what had happened that day, but they'd been instructed to tidy their reports up and, as their presiding man in charge explained it, 'dumb it down' for the local cops so they could close it out nice and neat. Audrey had spent more hours sitting in her hotel room with Blair Davis trying to come up with a way to explain what had happened that met the standard for 'reality' than she felt she had working on the actual case itself. In the end, they'd managed to fudge up something about how the man they'd apprehended was schizophrenic, and they got a doctor to confirm it, though both of them knew something else had really happened.

Audrey wasn't saying that she believed in God, or the devil, but she believed with every ounce of her being that the serial killer they'd tracked down was possessed – honest to God possessed by something _bad_, and both she and Blair had been having trouble dealing with it. It was part of the reason Audrey was so exhausted when she left Sea-Tac. She and Blair had stayed up the night before in their shared hotel room trying to convince themselves that when they went home, things would be fine.

"I think my husband thinks I've cracked," Blair had told her as they lay huddled in their separate beds, staring at the ceiling in the darkness. "I've been awake so long I forgot what day it was. I told him all day I'd been thinking it was Tuesday, and he said, 'No Blair, it's _Thursday_', just like that. I think he's just bothered because he can't be out here. He hates it when I do the creepy cases," she said, rolling over to look in Audrey's direction.

Audrey had only snorted. "Where I live, weird is normal. Maybe you guys should take a vacation there, let him see for himself – if he can ever take a day off from work, that is," she added with a grin.

"Hey, that bar is his baby," she insisted. "Believe me; I think if he could take it out for dinner and a movie, he would." The ironic thing was that Blair was about the most gorgeous woman Audrey had ever even seen, and Audrey found it hard to believe her husband Daniel would ever actually say something like that. "Oh, he has," she'd assured her. "When I told him I would be gone for two months, he said that he wanted a divorce so he could marry the bar." She'd laughed again, a melodic and full sound.

It had made Audrey miss Nathan terribly, though. The way Blair and Daniel bantered on the phone when she did hear her was strangely reminiscent of the first few times Audrey had gone out with Nathan. The two had such an interesting dynamic, and Audrey was thankful that she'd realized it and acted upon it before it was too late.

Audrey snapped back to the present as Nathan made a gesture in front of her face. By the looks of his expression, he'd been talking to her and she'd been off in la-la land. "What?' she said, shaking her head.

"I said, are you hungry at all?" he asked, squinting his eyes at her. They were a a drive through off of the last exit before they hit the long two-lane road into Haven. The fog was lifted still, the sun bright and shining, with a cool breeze rustling the pines that towered over everything around the road.

"Oh! No, sorry," she said. When he turned back to order, she slapped her cheeks a little to wake herself up. She was starting to fade in and out of consciousness from lack of sleep, that's what must have happened. She knew if she fell asleep in the truck, she'd regret it for the rest of her life, so she sat up and rolled the window down some, trying to get some air.

Despite not having ordered anything, she drank half of Nathan's Coca-Cola on the way back to the house, something he commented on briefly until she rolled her eyes and leaned over to give him a kiss on the cheek. It shut him up for a while, but it still didn't stop him from shaking the cup loudly every time he took a sip to emphasize how much is there was and how much not-soda was left.

When they got to the house, she felt the weak amount of caffeine wearing off, and struggled to get her things inside without falling over. She felt such a sense of relief wash over her as she walked into the foyer of the house that she actively breathed a long sigh.

"That good to be home, huh?" Nathan asked as he bumped past her. He dragged her stuff into the bedroom and set it down by the closet, then came back out where she was. "I've got the next few days off, so if you want to go lay down for a while, there are some things around the house that I can do," he offered. He still felt like she was going to push him away at any moment; he couldn't explain why, precisely, but he just didn't want to let himself believe that she was still as attached as she was before she'd left.

To his surprise, Audrey reached out and wrapped her arm around him. She was still a great deal shorter than him, and she was wearing her comfortable shoes rather than her heels or boots, so she was at her natural height rather than her 'normal' height. She pulled herself into him in another hug, one every bit as intense as the one in the airport but more intimate. She always felt safer around Nathan, even if the notorious troubles in Haven seemed to follow him around like a plague.

"Is that a no?" he asked with a laugh. He accommodated her all the same, leaning in to drop a few kisses on her lips, which he found she returned eagerly.

"Come lay down with me?" she asked. She batted her blue eyes at him and offered up a smile that, while tired, was hard to resist. She just had that way about her that made it hard for him to say no.

"Sure," he said, after a deliberate pause to cause her to jab him in the chest with her index finger. "For a while." And with that, he scooped her up, a small cry of surprise coming from her as he did so. It wasn't even about the prospect of physical intimacy of having Audrey so familiar with his bed; it was more about the way things felt 'right' when they were together. It'd been a very long time since he let anyone get that close to him, and Audrey had found a way in. If she wanted to play cute and cuddle for a few hours, he damn sure wasn't going to turn her down.


	3. Errands

I do not own Audrey, Nathan, or any of the characters created for Haven. I only own the original characters. This story is set a year into Nathan and Audrey knowing eachother.

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003

Nathan couldn't remember the last time he'd felt so relaxed. He'd struggled for a very long time in his life with the idea that he was bad or different or damned, and when Audrey had rolled in, he'd still been dealing with it, but somehow, he'd come to realize that his 'ability' made him unique and better. He'd accept that it could be both a blessing as well as a curse if that meant not having to wrestle with old ideals of trying to overcome some terrible stigma he'd been forced into as a child (or further back than that; Troubles were generations old, after all). He ran his finger down her round jawline slowly, watching her move a little in her sleep, and smiled to himself at the notion of how easy it would be to irritate her by poking her while she was asleep. Was it bad of him that his first instinct was to instigate, with her?

Of course, Nathan and Audrey were nothing if not feisty, and they both sure did egg eachother on quite a bit. So what if she'd been back less than twenty-four hours and he was already thinking of something to do that would annoy her? It was all in good fun, anyways. She made a noise and rolled over in her sleep, and Nathan moved his arm as the weight of her shifted away. It was asleep, no doubt, though he couldn't really tell. It felt heavy and clumsy, but he didn't feel the pins and needles the way most people did. All the same, he let it hang straight at his side for a few minutes before he got up out of bed. It'd been nearly six hours since they'd first gotten in there, and despite the fact that they hadn't gone to sleep _right_ away, Nathan couldn't sleep the entire day away.

After his shower and a quick shave, again, he left a note on the table for Audrey and left to go run some errands before the party. He wasn't going to stress that everything be perfect, because perfect really didn't have a definition in his eyes, but he was going to attempt to have one evening of a celebratory nature without having someone die, something explode, or any other sort of unfortunate event that could occur – and in Haven, that left a lot of doors open. He pulled up to Rosemary's bakery shop at around four-thirty stopped in for a quick check on the cake.

"Oh, hey Nathan!" a voice from the back called. "Just a second!" A few moments passed and a slender girl with a short brunette ponytail emerged from the back. She brushed floury hands onto her light purple apron and then held her hand out to shake his. "I thought I heard your truck out there," she said with a characteristic sweet smile.

"Cherie, you've got the hearing of a bat," Nathan expressed, taking her hand in his own for a moment before releasing it. "Is the cake ready for tonight? I wanted to swing by and take a look at it before you guys get it ready to take over to the Gull," he said.

"Yeah, sure! Come on through the back and you can see it in its natural state," she offered, gesturing to the door at the end of the counter listed as Employees Only. When he'd found his way back there, Cherie lead him through several rows of cooking equipment to an area of floor chillers, where she opened one up to show him the cake on the rack, boxed and ready to go. "What do you think?" she asked, looking at him proudly.

"Looks amazing. I don't know that everyone will get a piece, though," he said. "I think we're going to end up with a few more heads than anticipated. I guess I didn't think so many people would come, but after the Herald announcement..." he trailed off. David and Vince were great, and he knew they adored Audrey, but he definitely hadn't expected an announcement in the paper. Oh well. The more, the merrier.

Cherie smiled at him again, that dimple in her chin showing. "Officer Wournos, do you really think so little of us? Please, we have tons of little snacks ready for tonight. The cake was just the final touch," she bragged. "Now get out of here, I've got to get this ready to go and then close up and change – unless your girlfriend doesn't mind me showing up covered in flower," she teased.

Nathan opened his mouth to say something about how Audrey wasn't his girlfriend, but he just let it go with shake of his head. They hadn't discussed fully what was going on, but he supposed that she was as close to a girlfriend as the definition got, right now, and he'd go with it until she said differently. Hopefully she wouldn't get the opportunity to before they talked about it, though. If Audrey had another one of those, "OH NO, WE'RE NOT DATING" outbursts like she had so long ago, he might actually stomp on her foot. Honestly, tact was not something she possessed.

With a wave, he parted ways with Cherie and made his way to the Grey Gull, where he knew Duke would be setting up. The bar was perfectly positioned on the water, the parking lot only a short walk to the more ornate front half, or if you came in off of the docks, an entrance in the back so that you didn't have to go all the way up and around the pier. Duke had really done something good with the place, which was about the only nice thing Nathan could really say for him, and so he left it at that. He was glad the man had agreed to help with Audrey's coming home party, even if he still felt somewhere in there the man was up to no good.

"Hey officer," Duke greeted smoothly, not turning around as he finished filling up some of the napkin holders at the bar.

Nathan's brow crooked. Why did everyone know he was coming in before he actually said anything? Was it his presence? Did he smell? "Duke," he greeted evenly. "How does everything look for tonight?"

Duke turned around, a half-smirk on his face. "Everything is going to be fine. I've got everything in order, including plan-b scenarios that include "What if we run out of beer?" and "What if we get attacked by a sea monster?" so we should be okay."

"Well, what _if_ we get attacked by a sea monster?" Nathan pressed.

"We use the kegs to float to safety? Maybe I hadn't thought that one out as much as I should have, but I think we'll be okay," Duke said with a wry laugh. Leave it to Nathan to shoot a hole in the one joke he'd made.

Nathan laughed anyways. "I'm just giving you a hard time," he said, holding his hands up. "I just came by to make sure everything was going according, and it looks like it is, so I'll leave you to it. Audrey should be waking up any minute now and realizing I'm not there, so I'd better head back that way."

Duke managed an unfriendly smile. "Oh yeah? Didn't waste any time, I see," he said.

"Not today," Nathan warned. He locked his own blue eyes with Duke's brown ones, and held his gaze for a moment, the disturbing lack of calm and stern authority from him altogether unsettling.

"Not today," Duke finally agreed. "But every other chance I get."

"Just not to her," Nathan called over his shoulder, throwing a hand up in departure. As he walked back out to the parking lot, he couldn't help but roll his eyes. Who was he kidding to have believed Duke was 'over it'? He was only over the idea of Audrey for as long as Audrey wasn't in town. As soon as she came back, of course he was going to act like a bitter, wounded animal again. Nathan was just thankful Audrey wasn't stupid enough to fall for it. Duke could have his pick of women in the harbor, but he wasn't going to get Audrey from Nathan – not now, not ever. That was one thing that Nathan Wournos was sure of.


	4. Dreaming

I do not own Audrey, Nathan, or any of the characters created for Haven. I only own the original characters. This story is set a year into Nathan and Audrey knowing eachother.

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004

Audrey was dreaming, and in her dream, things were getting a little intense. She and Blair had been minding their own business when they'd spotted a suspect thought to be involved in the murders that had brought them to Seattle in the first place. The short version was that children kept ending up in dumpsters with strange scrawlings on their hands; Blair and Audrey were known as the 'weird girls', so when the case took a turn for the demonic and ritualistic outside of the normal wannabe psychotic killing stretch, they were both summoned in; Audrey from Maine and Blair from New York.

Blair was fast – a fast thinker, talker, doer. She had liked Audrey immediately, which was good, because within ten minutes of being introduced, they had a pile of work between them. The case had been going steady for a while before the girls had been called in, and now the bureau felt they had brought in the 'big guns' and were confident it would be handled in a matter of weeks. Those weeks, naturally, turned out to be a lot longer because nobody had ever anticipated what they were going to find – or just how far Blair and Audrey were willing to dig.

In this dream, she and Blair were at that same diner, trying to talk about something other than the case, when it happened – both of them looked outside of the window at the same time, into the rainy dusk of the city, to see their a man fitting the only description they had of the killer run by. They both were up and running, because neither of them couldn't help themselves, and before either of them knew it, they'd chased him underground somewhere, into an endless maze of pipelines and tunnels.

"D'you hear that?" Blair asked of Audrey, her voice barely above a whisper. In the distance, they could hear a child crying.

Audrey nodded. "Not enough time to call for backup," she said, gun drawn, same as her partner's.

Blair looked at her for a second, the low light making it incredibly hard for either of them to see. "Let's go get us a bad guy," she said finally. With one last shaking breath, she started moving towards the sounds again, Audrey right behind her.

What they had found... Audrey's mind couldn't comprehend it at first. She hadn't screamed, because she just wasn't the type, and Blair hadn't either – at first. On a first impression, it looked like a man – a drifter, a vagrant, just like he'd been described. But when they saw him, _really_ saw him, his entire appearance shifted and changed. He was almost like a rotting sort of corpse, a half-smile on his maggot-eaten countenance with empty sockets where eyes should have been. The air smelled putrid, of sulfur and flame, and Audrey could taste ashes on her tongue.

Audrey's dream had run away with her, taking all of the evils she had felt and compounding them into one horrifying vision, and now she couldn't escape it. She raised the gun and began firing at the thing, but it just kept advancing on her, until she was backed into a corner – and suddenly she was on a platform, overlooking rushing water and jagged rocks. She kept calling out for someone, but all she could hear was the child screaming and Agent Davis yelling and the demon-monster-thing breathing, and she tripped and fell back.

She awoke with a scream in her throat, one hand clutching her pillow while the other nearly broke Nathan's hand.

It took her a few seconds to calm down, naturally, and she took them at liberty while allowing Nathan to ask her a barrage of questions, only half of which she'd even bother answering. She hated waking up in a cold sweat, and she never used to do it before she'd moved to Haven, but now it was becoming routine. Of course, that wasn't very fair to say – this was the first time in a while that she'd woken up so intensely.

"I think that was about the worst dream I've ever had," she confessed finally, sitting up. She'd let go of Nathan's hand finally, and he'd gone to get her a bottle of water while she got her bearings together. Audrey wasn't the most coherent of people when she woke up, regardless of what time it was. He sat back down on the bed and looked at her with that concerned, pained expression he always wore.

"I'm _fine_," she insisted. "I just had a dream I was being attacked and then I was falling... it was a mess," she said, waving her hands. She wasn't a very good liar, but she also wasn't in the habit of it – if Nathan didn't believe her, he didn't indicate either way. Instead, he just nodded and gave her a kiss on the cheek.

"As long as you're fine, now," he told her. "But if it happens again, we're going to have to see about some de-stressing that needs to be done. Can't have you waking me up at two, three o'clock in the morning screaming and flailing about," he warned her. He caught her dumbfounded expression with a smile, and she realized he was joking.

"Very funny, Nathan," she said sharply. "Believe me, I hope that's the last of them." She sighed, and they sat in silence for a few minutes before Audrey slapped the bedpsread with her palm. "I'd better get up and get cleaned off and changed for my party," she said, and with that, began crawling out of the blankets.

"Your 'surprise' party, Audrey!" Nathan corrected her. "Don't forget. Surprise."

"Right," she acknowledged. "Because nobody would ever think that I know you guys well enough to know when you're planning something like this."

"Hey, I don't know if they expect you to be in on this or not, but could you just act surprised for me?" he asked. He made such a face at her that Audrey couldn't possibly refuse.

"Okay, fine," she said, holding up her hands and laughing. "I'll act surprised. I'll even scream if it makes you happy, but quit with the puppy face." She disappeared into the bathroom to shower and change, and roughly an hour later, they were on their way to the Grey Gull.


	5. Surprise

005

The Gull was exactly like she remembered, much to her pleasure. She needed some familiarity right then, and between the rumble of Nathan's truck and the ugly little jalepeno-shaped lights that someone had strung over the front entrance to the bar, Audrey found she could not ask for much else. She also found that Nathan had found himself with an inability to stop touching her. Currently, her hand rested on her left leg, and his was over hers. She thought it was endearing how every time she looked over at him, she'd look away like he hadn't been staring at her.

As they got to the Gull, she slid out of the truck, smiling as Nathan ran around to try and open her door. He hadn't been fast enough, and so Audrey allowed him to shut it for her, folding her arms with a grin. "Are you going to kiss my ass all night?" she asked, her tone taunting, but good-natured.

"I'm just trying to be nice," he said defensively. He didn't seem to take any offense to what she'd said despite his tone, and he held his arm out for her. "I just... missed you." He didn't want to say anything more, because he was concerned about the nightmare he'd had, even if he'd let it go earlier without a fight. He leaned in as she took his arm, dropping a kiss on her cheek. "I'll stop," he volunteered.

"Oh, you better not," she laughed. "Come on. Let's go. I've been working on my surprised face," she added, walking side-by-side with him as they approached the Gull. She could see people ducking from her vantage point; they were trying to dart by the windows quickly and failing. The lights dimmed suddenly and she looked at Nathan with a mock surprised expression. "How's this?" she asked.

"You should probably dial it back a scoch," he advised.

Just as they got to the door, Audrey's phone rang. She broke away from Nathan and held a hand up, despite his protesting. "It's Blair," she explained. "It'll just take a second, I promise." With that, she walked back down the steps and into the front of the Gull, tracing a circle in the grass with her path.

"Hey, Davis," she said. "What's up? I was just about to walk into my party," she said. "Which, by the way, I'm not supposed to know about," she added.

On the other end, Blair was sitting outside of the bar her husband owned, a beer in her hand. She had gone out behind the structure where the employees parked and had seated herself cross-legged on the wooden picnic table that they all used when they took breaks to hide from the crowd.

"I'm actually ditching my own party, too," she said. "Coop really went all out. _Everyone_ is here. Even people I don't even _like_," she added, one of the detectives in particular on her mind. "I haven't had two seconds to myself since I've gotten home. It's like he knows something's wrong," she added softly.

"What's wrong?" Audrey asked, her brows arching. "Blair, are you... are you having nightmares?"

The phone was silent for a few seconds – long enough that Audrey had to check and see if Blair was still there. Finally, Blair made a sound of accord, raising her beer to her lips and taking a long drink. "They're pretty bad. My Chief has me on a leave of absence right now, but it's not helping. I've talked to a shrink but I had to make it pretty scarce." Blair came from her own weirdness, every bit as much as Haven's, but demons weren't commonly accepted as fact, and she didn't need to be on anyone's radar.

"Why don't you and Daniel come here?" she asked suddenly.

"What?" Blair said, surprised.

"The idea just hit me," she said. "Why don't you guys take a break and come here? Or, if you can't get him away from the bar, you could come here," she added. "We've got an extra room, and I have some vacation time coming to me."

"I don't know," she said softly. "I doubt Daniel would want to come. I'd have to talk it over with him. I mean, his best friend here can run this bar with his eyes closed, but Maine isn't really his thing. He's a city boy at heart – hell, I'm a city girl," she added with a laugh. "But thank you for the offer."

Audrey kicked at a rock as she made another circle; she glanced up at Nathan and nodded, holding up her hand to signal five minutes. "Consider it. Please. We'd love to have you – both of you. I think it'd be good for you, aside from that. Haven's a little... I told you some of it, but I think it'd be a welcomed break from the other stuff," she assured her.

"I will," she promised. "I'll let you get back to it," she said. "I should go back inside, too, before they send someone out here after me. Some of my friends are already pretty tanked, so it's getting kind of interesting inside." She paused. "Thanks, Audrey."

"Hey, no problem. Call me again if you have another nightmare, okay? I'll do the same. We'll get through this together." Audrey smiled as she heard people in the background discovering Blair's hiding spot, then hung up and put her phone in its holder. She felt weird without her gun, her fingers passing over where her holster would have been.

"Everything okay?" Nathan asked as she came back up the steps. "You had a serious look on your face, there."

Audrey shrugged. "Just Blair," she answered, brushing off his remark. She wasn't willing to drag him into any of it; she and Blair had agreed not to say anything to anyone, and that was what they were doing. "I invited she and Daniel here," she told him. "Figured maybe the four of us could do stuff that didn't relate to work. She's on a leave and I'm thinking of using some vacation time, so it would work."

"Okay, that could work," Nathan said, his tone pleasant. "It could be fun. We need a break. And we need friends," he added, a pained expression on his face. "Friends that don't live here and friends that aren't terribly nosy," he added, nodding as Duke stuck his head in the window and made a hurry-up motion at them. "Are you ready?"

She nodded, taking his hand. "As I'll ever be," she said with a sigh. She smiled. "I'm glad that you'd be okay with them coming to visit, though. I think you and Daniel would get along. He was a cop until recently. He and Blair are hilarious. Plus another alpha male around would drive Duke nuts, and that's always fun," she remarked, causing Nathan to snort.

"SURPRISE! WELCOME BACK!" the chorus cried. Audrey and Nathan flinched as they felt themselves pelted with _something_ – which turned out to be confetti – and were immediately handed glasses of champagne.

"Oh, wow," Audrey breathed, her grey-blue eyes surveying the bar. There were balloons and decorations hung, along with hand-made posters and a massive collage that everyone had stuck a photo of them with Audrey on. She was amazed, and she felt her eyes watering up slightly at the amount of effort that had gone into her party.

"Welcome! Finally," Duke added under his breath. He shook Nathan's hand, gripping it more tightly than he should have, but Nathan made no effort to react (mostly because he couldn't feel it), simply yanking his hand away quickly. "Nathan. Audrey!" he cried, wrapping the blonde in a hug.

"Hey, Duke," she said, her tone pleasant. "This is... really something. Thank you."

"It's no problem," he said with a shrug. "It's just our way of saying thank you. Plus, there are a few judges here, and I kind of want to be on their good side, so free booze is a good way to make that happen," he added, thrusting his hands into his back pockets and rocking up to his toes like a child.

She couldn't help but laugh. "Well, thanks anyways. I'm going to go grab some food and say hi," she said, touching Nathan lightly on the arm. "You two _behave_," she warned. She left the two of them standing face to face.

"So..." Duke said.

"So..." Nathan said.

"Have her nightmares started yet?" Duke prompted. He swiped Nathan's champagne from him and took a long swallow of it.

Nathan frowned. "Yeah," he said. "They think the demon followed her here, or the other girl to New York. But now she's saying she invited her and her husband to Haven, which means that it won't matter, because it'll end up here sooner or later when they group."

Duke sighed. "Bad news bears," he muttered. "You think we can help take this thing out without them realizing that we started working behind their backs?" he asked hopefully.

"Well... no. So just... make sure you have a really good reason," Nathan advised. "I need to... go," he concluded. He snatched the glass of champagne back, making a face as he drank the rest of it, then thrust it back at Duke before vanishing into the crowd.


	6. Sleepless

006

When Audrey had suggested the idea of Blair and Daniel coming to Haven, Blair had immediately written the idea off. But now? Now, she wasn't so sure.

It was three in the morning – three _thirty_, to be exact. Blair was standing on the balcony of the two-story that she and Daniel lived in, based in a small suburban area of New York City. Downstairs, she could see her sister Iris sitting downstairs on the rail of the patio, feet swinging as she talked on the phone. She wondered if that was what had woken her up initially, but after a few moments of lingering, she could tell that Iris hadn't been yelling. In fact, she was barely speaking at all, only nodding as someone else spoke.

Blair cracked open the beer in her hands and dropped down into a wicker chair on the smallish area provided, then promptly forgot about it as she set it down by the leg of the chair and sighed. She closed her eyes, trying to force the thoughts in her head to slow down. They were dark, violent, like something in her head was unwilling to let her move on.

"Hey!"

Blair snapped her eyes open, jumping enough to almost knock over the cold bottle next to the chair. She reached down quickly, reflexes allowing her to catch the bottle by the neck before it fell over entirely. It foamed up, billowing out of the bottle and coating her fingers as she stood, the chair moving back with a scrape against the wooden floor. As she raised her hand to her mouth, sucking the spilled beer off her fingers absently, she came to the edge of the railing and looked down. In the grass, in a sweater, pajama pants and a pair of fur boots, was her sister.

"Hey," Blair called down.

Iris tipped her head, blonde ponytail slipping from her shoulder and falling behind her head to her back. In her hand, her phone, still lit up as she curled it beneath her chin. "You okay?" she asked, her voice much more quiet then before, but still audible. Iris was the only person she'd confided in about the events with the demon, and she had taken it at face value, but still worried about her sister.

Blair couldn't find an answer right away. "I'm coming down," she said finally. She disappeared into the bedroom, creeping past her sleeping husband, and felt herself picking up speed by the time she hit the stairs. When she'd gotten to the bottom, she was practically running, and came out the door and immediately into the outstretched arms of her blonde counterpart.

"Sweetie, what's wrong?" Iris asked, her voice soft. "Is it about what happened with the whole.." she trailed off.

"Yeah," Blair agreed. She pulled away from her sister, frowning as the two of them simply stood there in the yard in the cold. "I think I need to tell Coop," she said. She turned her head to look up at the darkened house instinctively as she said her husband's nickname, lips twitching a little as she tried to imagine his reaction.

"Yeah?" Iris said, brows lofting. "He's been through some bad stuff, too, Blair. He'll be okay."

"You think?" she asked, not sure if she could get on board with her sister's optimism.

Iris studied her sister, reaching up to put her hand on her shoulder. "I know," she assured her.

Blair nodded, then took a deep breath, shaking her hands out to try and expel some of the excess energy she felt creeping up into her body. "I think, uh – I think maybe I'll take Parker up on that offer to come see them. In Maine. Maybe I can tell him then, with her there. It would be... more comfortable."

Iris nodded. She may have been a little younger, but she was definitely wise beyond her years. "Do you want me to go with you guys? Nathaniel and I have been talking about taking some time off," she offered. "But I don't know who could run the bar," she added, a frown creasing her pretty features.

"I'd really like that," Blair said. "But you're right about the bar." She turned, taking her sister by the arm, linking hers in with it, and walking back up to the porch in step. When she fell quiet again, Iris took the lead.

"I'll tell you what," she said, turning to her as they reached the door. "_I_ will find coverage for the bar. _You_ convince your husband that he needs a vacation. I'll get Nathaniel on board – that won't be hard, he's got an itch to get out for a while – and _then_ I'll book four non-refundable tickets. You know Coop hates to waste money." She grinned impishly.

Blair bowed her head a little. "Thank you," she said sincerely. "What would I do without you?"

"Well, you certainly wouldn't have met your husband," Iris joked. "You do recall I was the one that dumped my drink on him for you," she reminded her. "And anyways, I want to meet this Audrey chick. She got to work with you in the field. We never get to do that. Truth be told, I'm a little curious about her."

"Don't profile her," Blair warned.

"I won't!" Iris laughed. "Listen, just... don't worry about anything. Get Coop on board, I'll handle the rest. Oh, and call Audrey and let her know we're coming. And... tell her about the nightmares. Maybe she's having them, too. It could mean something," she said softly.

Blair nodded. "Maybe," she agreed. "It's just hard to talk about. But, I'll try."

"If anyone will understand, it'll be Audrey. She was with you, Blair. She won't leave you hanging, not if she's as good of a girl as you say she is." She smiled a little.

"She is," Blair assured her sister. "You'll love her."

"Okay," Iris agreed. She wrapped an arm around her sister and lead her inside. "Go to bed. I'm going to go to Nathaniel's for tonight. By the time you're up, I'll have it all handled," she promised.

Blair went back upstairs, feeling slightly better about the entire situation. She should have gone to her sister sooner, or called Audrey sooner. It was her own fault for holding it in, but she couldn't help the fact that she wanted to just forget – but, evidently, she wasn't going to forget. Going up to Maine, getting away, _telling Coop? _It could help. It certainly couldn't hurt. She crawled into bed and curled up next to Daniel, who was flat on his back and hogging the bed. She managed to knee him over enough to get comfortable, dropped a kiss on his neck, and closed her eyes. With a last heavy sigh, she drifted off into sleep, and this time, thankfully she did not dream.


End file.
